The View from Lazy Point

Beginning in his kayak in his home waters of eastern Long Island, Carl Safina takes us through the four seasons to the four points of the compass, from high Arctic to south Antarctica, across the warm belly of the tropics from the Caribbean to the west Pacific, then home again. We meet Eskimos whose way of life is melting away, explore a secret global seed vault hidden within the Arctic Circle, investigate dilemmas facing foraging bears and breeding penguins, and sail to devastated reefs in the South Pacific that are coming back to life.

“Each time science tightens a coil in the slack of our understanding,” Safina writes, “it elaborates its fundamental discovery: connection.”

Safina shows how the environment’s problems drive very real matters of human justice and well-being and our prospects for peace. He shows that nature and human dignity require one another.

In his hands all is not doom and gloom. Nature’s continuous renewal points toward our future. His vivid stories grant new insights into how our world is changing and what our responses should be.